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Hey guys, I'm so excited to introduce this week's episode of midlife AF. It's called awakened AF and I think it's probably one of the best episodes I've ever done.
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I hope you enjoy it over to me
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if you're a woman in midlife, his intuition is telling you that giving booze the elbow might be the next right move. Their midlife AF is the podcast for you. Join counselor psychotherapist this naked mind and gray area drinking alcohol coach Emma Gilmore for a weekly natter about parenting quirky teens, menopause relationships and navigating this thing called midlife alcohol free. If you're feeling that life could be so much more that you're sick and tired of doing all the things for everyone else. If your intuition is waving her arms manically at you saying it could all be so much easier if we didn't have to keep drinking. Come with me. Together we'll find our group without booze.
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I lovingly acknowledged the boomerang people of the Kulin nation as a custodians of current Baroque. I share my admiration for the Aboriginal culture I witnessed the connection that they have for each other and the land and their community. As I swim in the waters and walk on the land, I feel the power of this place. I'm grateful for the Aboriginal peoples amazing custodianship, the power, beauty and the healing potential of this place. I wish to pay special respects to the elders of the Buena, wrong people. Their wisdom, guidance and support are exceptional, and felt well beyond the Aboriginal community. I honor that this is Aboriginal land, and that it has never been ceded. I am committed to listening to the Aboriginal community, and learning how I can be an active ally in their journey to justice. I hope you're all really well. Today we're gonna talk about a weakened AF and I'm just making sure I'm here so I can I got all the pieces open because sometimes on stream yard, I can't feel free to say hi, hi, addiction makes three you do such amazing work. I'm so pleased you're you're here. Melanie, hi, nice to see you as well talking about a weakened AF. And I'm talking about something a little bit different here. Because, you know, I go around as a human being in my life. And I'm heart of you know, entrepreneur groups and various other places. And often I get a reaction when I talk about what I do. And I get it from friends as well. Colleagues. There's an assumption that if you if you are stopping drinking it
Unknown Speaker 2:59
because
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you have a problem with alcohol. It's because you are addicted. It's a pro it's because you are an alcoholic. So these are the terms and often that creates. There's there's so much emotion that gets attached to those words. It really alienates most human beings. So the minute we get into those kinds of conversations, because, you know, for so many different reasons that we can talk about, there's so much ridiculous stigma created by the alcohol industry and the recovery movement in order to keep people drinking, right? Because if it's only those people over there in the corner with a problem that might have that might find alcohol problematic for their lives. And if everybody else has been sold the happy, happy Kool Aid, that alcohol is, you know, the elixir of life, the maker of everything good. The reliever of stress the I can't even think of the descriptive word but, you know, we've all been sold this big you know, we see it in the ads. Look, if you're having a seller with a Corona and you've got the ice doesn't love a blah, blah, blah madmen who are all advertising execs in the 60s We've been sold this this idea that alcohol we can't have fun without alcohol. We can't relieve stress without alcohol. We can't survive without alcohol. We can't cope without alcohol. Right. And there's very good reasons for us that that being sold and also this idea that the only reason that you would want to curtail your alcohol intake is because you have a problem, or because you are an alcoholic, and the rest of us can gather our naps in May and go hopping around the mulberry bush. I'm just mixing metaphors here. Everyone say hi by the way, if you're watching and you want to I it's really helpful to me to know who's there. But yeah, it's it's a bit of a bullshit. And it's been created by the alcohol industry and recovery movement because it's very, it makes a lot of people very rich for us to believe that the problem lies with us that the problem is only those people over there who've lost their house lost their families, and sitting in a ditch with a paper bag around they're
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very unpleasant
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alcohol. Nothing like the Pinot Noir from Dublin ethnicity fear that we're drinking.
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Because we drink pot out our column that means we're all right. We love champagne, darling.
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And I'm mocking because this is was with
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me too. So not to be an asshole.
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But the reason is good to see
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you going well.
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But the reason why I think it's really important that we get away from this. It's only those people that people with a problem. And what happens is people's shutters go down. Oh, no, I don't need to. Oh, no, not for me. What? No. And I've had it. I've had it in a mastermind group that I was part of until recently. And you get this like, oh, no, your real products and services are not for me. Because there's an assumption that because I work with people who want to change their relationship with alcohol, that they want to do that because they have a problem. And that they're one of those people over they're the ones who can't drink responsibly. Because otherwise why would you want why would you want to give up this amazing substance that is literally the thing that keeps everything moving? Okay, everything is the the band aid that keeps the whole thing ticking over. And so I think this is a really big distraction. I actually think it really prevents human beings seeking out an alcohol free lifestyle, because it's a much better frickin a life. You know, because when we get all tied up in this problematic drinking alcoholic, the devils you know, the devil is doing push ups on our doorstep. You know, this, this idea that this there's this amazing thing called alcohol but some of us aren't allowed to have it because we're not good humans, we can't be trusted. It's just nonsense, right? Alcohol is bad for everybody. Alcohol is number one carcinogen. drinking a bottle of wine is equivalent to having 10 cigarettes.
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Alcohol is the number one
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cause of you know it's always there when people suicide, suicide, it's always there. In domestic violence, it's always there. in emergency mode, say
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what I was talking to a couple of
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humans I know who work in the emergency and it's like 90% of emergency admissions are alcohol related. It's It's terrible for anxiety. It's terrible for depression. It's,
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you know, the World Health Organization,
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the Cancer Council and the common brain and the heart Foundation have all come out and said there's no safe amount of alcohol to drink and yet we hold on to it as if it was you know, literally I can't think of the word for it but like an elixir of life at the most sacred thing, and we're so sad to give it up Oh no gonna give up alcohol
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and I'm don't mean to be
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you know, a little bit cocky about it, but it makes me angry. And I get angry with the alcohol companies and I get angry with the drink responsibly campaign because they put the blame on the human being rather than themselves and the substance and the substance, you know, can't really be blamed in and of itself because
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it's an innocuous substance.
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It's not an innocuous substance but it's nice It's a substance, it's
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not a thing, it doesn't have morality, it's not doing something on purpose to you what is being done is the marketing companies and to a certain extent, the recovery movement who are pushing this idea that there are two types of people, those who can drink and those who can't drink. And, you know, that leaves those of us who can't drink, you know, to sit in the sad corner, wearing our dance hats feeling sorry for ourselves and wishing that we could be like the people who can drink over there, you know, dancing on the dance floor and having a whale of a time that none of this is true. It's just all absolute nonsense. But it's created for very Machiavellian reasons is created to make, you know, to make us feel like if you're a human being, and you've become, you know, our costs become problematic for you as in that you're drinking more than you want to. That doesn't have to mean and I would never have said I was an alcoholic, or even that I had a problem with alcohol. I just knew that it wasn't something I wanted to do anymore. I knew that my life would be better without it. Now, at the time when I stopped, didn't for a minute think that I was going to stop for good. My intention was to stop for a year and get all the experiences of being alcohol free for a year. I wonder if like secretly, actually, I kind of knew that I was going to stop saying I was going to have a year off alcohol was it felt like a perfectly acceptable thing to do in my friendship group? Because everyone's about health and wellness now, right? Having a 30 day break from alcohol is no big deal anymore. It's just something everyone does. That's changed a lot. But even in this mastermind group I was part of, you know, I'd have some people be like, oh, you know, I don't need to take a 30 day break. I don't have a problem. So that's interesting overreaction to taking a 30 day break from something that suddenly it's like, well, I don't have a problem, which, and it's this, this idea of problem and because what that means is that we as a human in some way. But if we have a problem, if we're in alcoholic in some way, we perceive ourselves to be faulty. Right. And then that brings that whole sort of shame cycle, that horrible feeling the pit in our stomach, which is just
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like, Oh, my God, I'm bad.
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And I talked to this because I know it as a person who drank until I was 46 years old, and stopped drinking and now a happily choose to live an alcohol free lifestyle because everything that alcohol was taken away from me was so much more than I ever thought it was, you know, I stopped drinking to lose weight. I stopped drinking to be a better role model for my kids. I stopped drinking was the other reason I stopped drinking.
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Remember, was to be able to get to
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the bottom of things without you know, going into doctor's surgery and then going, oh, you know, well, how much do you drink and sort of like fobbing you off because at the time I was getting quite bloated. I was really worried about my gut, my bloating, you know, in retrospect, now, I know that that will be you know, been perimenopause. But I don't think I knew anything about perimenopause until after I stopped drinking. That's the I mean, what happens when you stop drinking, it's like, you just learn and grow so much. Because you, you take this thing out of your life that's keeping everything shielded is a protective band aid for everything, it allows you to put up with all of the shit that's happening in your life, and not do anything about it. It basically keeps you stuck. And this is the reason why I'm like, let's stop talking about problem drinking. Let's stop talking about alcoholics. Such a Modere of waters and what it does is it stops human beings from saying I want to live an alcohol free lifestyle, because alcohol makes me feel like shit about myself. And it's keeping me stuck repeating the same patterns day after day that I'm having to drink to escape from. And so I'm using alcohol to escape from problems and because I'm using it to escape from them, I'm never dealing with them. So I wake up and I find that you know, I'm actually in a relationship with my partner which isn't doesn't feel good to me.
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Where I feel like
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I don't have any power or control in my life.
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Where I feel like
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I've lost all my essence you know, my joy Aviv my
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the thing that I was born and put on this earth to be
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a because I keep stamping it down and saying it's not for me, and I keep putting up with everything and I keep doing everything to try and be perfect to try I make my house tidy to try and have my kids go to school and do their homework and get good grades, and have sex with my husband by CO should, and work and I and and do my taxes, and exercise and all the fucking things
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so that I can be the person that everybody wants me to be.
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And what happens when we stop drinking? Is it's part of the Great Awakening. And Brene Brown talks about this in her work. She talks about, you know, this idea that we have two choices, midlife comes along, it taps us on the shoulders, and it says, you know, all of these coping mechanisms, all of this protective layers, all this bullshit that we have been using to keep ourselves safe for this long. No more. And you get to either step into midlife and choose to make it every freaking thing that it will you were put on this earth to be or you put your head down to put your blinkers on, you drink your wine, clench your butt cheeks, and you keep doing the same old thing over and over again, and nothing changes.
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I just lost my I lost myself there.
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And I think that's one of the things that's, you know, people don't realize it's like when you stop drinking is this huge, incredible awakening. And midlife is a huge incredible awakening, the menopause, perimenopause. It's like suddenly our estrogen stops, keeping us nurturing and putting up a ship alcohol was keeping us nurturing and putting up with shit. Suddenly, all those things have gone. So yeah, we can slam ourselves full of antidepressants. We can, you know,
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do whatever we need to do.
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But so much of what we experienced is trauma responses, you know, brain fog, tiredness.
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It almost everything that you experience in the physical body
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manifestations of our experience, our emotional experience. And, you know, we get into midlife and I, for one have been diagnosed with ADHD and autism. I'm also perimenopause or so it's a big cluster of symptoms. I was trying to work out what everything is, and, and whether, you know, I kept I recently stopped taking my antidepressants and my HR team, not something I'd recommend to anybody. Personal choice. And I did that because
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I was
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really tired. And the reason I was taking HRT was to help me with brain fog, memory loss, and focus. Because I don't get hot flashes or any of the other or like, a non-g vagina, or any of the other things that a lot of other women get. And use HRT for and there's nothing wrong with HRT. HRT is great, right? So this isn't me saying that when and same with antidepressants and anti anxiety meds. This is just my personal plea, please, please know this. But I did it because I've spent most of my life not feeling and I thought it was a my trait. I thought I was a person who didn't feel. Turns out that's not true. From what I can see from what I'm discovering, and this journey into midlife to this great awakening, which I so encourage all of you to do. Because this is how we stop being so reactive. And the reason we drink is because we cannot be with our experience of life, be that our emotional experience or our you know, actual genuineness experience of life. And for me, I wanted to and as a neurodivergent human as well. I struggle with feeling I have to really focus to feel and most of the time it's much easier for me not to and I know that's the opposite of some neuro divergence who have the hypo version I'm hyper version but yeah, I discovered that I actually do feel feel very greatly. I just have to focus to do it because my protect mechanisms keep me safe by not. There's so much to be discovered about being authentic about being our real selves about unmasking about stopping this huge pretense that we all are doing and performing these lives that we're all trying to keep up with, but it completely and utterly impossible. His expectations and even things like you know, all of the harm that's happening to women in the world, you know, I speak to so many women who are in a very, very, you know, relationships where they are being made to feel really shitty about themselves all the time, and it doesn't matter
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what socio economic
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background they're from, is so common. And, you know, I was just thinking about the Brittany Murphy thing today and
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and even though people murdered in the Sydney
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the Bondi Junction,
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they're saying that he was focused on women again, and so many of us, you know, we feel like we're in this modern world, and I don't know about you guys, but I woke up 45 Stop drinking 46 And I'm like, this modern world is is not what it's pretends to be on it, you know, it pretends that
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we, we are.
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We are free, but we're not.
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And we're stuck a lot of the time.
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But we have choice, we do have choice. And we can get unstuck even though it feels like we're unsplit but in order to get unstuck, we have to stop being a slave to booze.
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Booze is keeping us putting it up with it all.
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I'm going to have to go because the state agent is going to be in a minute but I encourage you to start thinking about stopping drinking not as something that you have to do because your bad week blur the blur all that story
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is not true. That have to do anything.
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Stopping drinking allows you to step into being a grown ass fucking a woman and understand what's going on in your life and deal with it. And the reason it's important is because then we can show our children that they matter and they get to put their big girl pants on too. I mean my generation we just stayed in relationships we always had we had sex with people just to you know not be not because we didn't know how to say no we didn't know how to get out of these situations. We didn't know how to be you know, because we didn't want to be rude to people and it just
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I don't want our kids growing up like that.
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And I think alcohol keeps us stuck in this compliant state and I think because we're in now we need to stop being so compliant and start
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rattling rattling Shut up a bit.
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Anyway, I'm gonna go estate agents going to be here. Hope
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you're all well and lots and lots of love
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thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of midlife AF with Emma Gilmore. If you enjoyed it, please share on Instagram for your friends and tag me at hote rising coaching. If you want to help me grow the podcast please review the episodes for me on Apple podcast that really helps. If you would like to work further with me please go to my website www Haute rising coaching.com for my free and paid programs or email me at Emma at Hope rising coaching.com sending a massive cuddle to you and yours for me and mine and remember to keep choosing you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
